Biden signs bill to fund US federal government, avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has signed legislation that prevents a government shutdown as the United States approaches the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

His action Saturday concludes days of disruption in the nation’s capital after Congress passed a bipartisan budget plan just after the deadline and turned back President-elect Donald Trump’s key demand in the deal.

The legislation provides government funding at current levels through March 14, and it supplies $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers.

In the early hours Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate passed a stopgap spending bill to fund the U.S. government through March.

Both chambers of Congress — the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democrat-controlled Senate — had to approve the measure for it to pass and avoid a government shutdown.

Biden indicated Friday he supported the bill and would sign it into law.

The legislation will not raise the federal debt ceiling.

The 85-11 Senate vote came after the House of Representatives, following two failed attempts, passed the bill. The vote there was 366-34, with one member voting present. All 34 House votes against the bill were cast by Republicans.

"We're excited about this outcome," House Speaker Mike Johnson said after the House vote, adding that he had spoken with Trump, who "was certainly happy about this outcome, as well."

"This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending," Johnson told reporters after the vote.

House Republicans reached an agreement among themselves on a new proposal earlier Friday. The last-ditch effort to avoid a government shutdown came after Republicans in Congress failed on Thursday to pass a spending bill backed by Trump that would have raised the debt ceiling, which Trump had demanded at the last minute.

Dozens of Republicans voted against Thursday’s bill, and only two Democrats supported it.

The new plan is the same bill as the one that failed Thursday, except without the debt ceiling suspension.

Problems began for Johnson this week when he abandoned a bipartisan funding deal he had reached with Democrats after Trump and billionaire Elon Musk lambasted the plan.

Even though the House passed the bill, government funding technically would have run out at midnight Friday. However, most of the impact of the shutdown would not have begun to take effect until Monday.

The longest U.S. government shutdown in history lasted 34 days, from December 2018 until January 2019, when then-President Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill that did not include several billion dollars for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The ploy hurt his approval ratings.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.